User blog:Starfleet Academy/LW's future
Hi, all! I've finally decided to go in to print on what I believe to be best course of action in salvaging Locomotive Wiki. This blog will outline my plan to make LW more inclusive, more reliable and more successful. We're going down a well traveled path... let's just not deviate from that which is easiest. From looking at what we have to change, the less unique things we do now, so leave for later, the faster we get back on track! Free editing I guess this should be first on the ticket: I see no reason why LW shouldn't be like all other wikis and allow users, and anons alike, to edit the articles. It's how a wiki works. There has been far too much emphasis on opinion, and far too little on fact and concrete evidence of late. This has to be ended. All successful wikis, i.e. the wikis closest to 100 WAM score, solve the issue of free-editing vs. correct information. In LW's case things cannot get much worse, but users still shouldn't be given carte blanche though. The balance is in there; it's already been found many, many times over. Articles do go through transformations, especially on big wikis, and major articles — in our case locomotive, steam locomotive, diesel locomotive etc. — often must be locked against at least overwhelming anon editing, or more sinister happenings. However, not here on a wiki that has articles do we have to lock any of said articles. Policy reform Next on my list is fixing up the rules for Locomotive Wiki. I'm over the, "move an inch and your dead," tactic. Neither do I believe in the giant, tl;dr, inflexible, Big Brotherish rules list. (You know, a 200 bullet point list of nasties.) Nor do I like the rabbit warren of separate pages explaining everything in unnecessary, nitty-gritty detail. The alternative, in my opinion, is to take the two styles and merge them. In other words, the rules page would continue to exist, but instead would list common things that may get you into hot water — but that needs another whole blog devoted to it. I also would like to introduce more policies to LW. So, for instance, there's a list telling users what they cannot do (and a minor part on what they can), but there's nothing on how the admins are supposed to use their powers, or not as the case may be. Hence, things going awry recently. There is also a "new" concept that I'd like to introduce to Locomotive Wiki, something used to great effect on other wikis: Guidelines. Instead of saying that a user will be blocked for making a grammatical error, a system of guidelines helps to explain not only the rationale behind an idea, but also the implementation of that idea. In other words, that user may not have understood the truncated, rule-like version, so just soldiered on hoping they'd get it right. However, if a page filled out the intent of the idea, then the user would probably agree with it, and probably follow it. If they didn't know it existed or ignored it, the guideline gives other users a concrete reason to make alterations to the edit as well as something to link to in the edit summary. See also, . To avoid me making any further unnecessary comment on this, here's a list of core policies and guidelines that I think would benefit Locomotive Wiki: ;Voting policy :This policy, once introduced properly, can be a great asset to a wiki and avoids some users getting more of a say in favor of others. While I'm not sure the Wiki is ready for a policy like this, i.e. we don't have enough users yet, I do think that writing it now would avoid problems implementing it later. A simple caveat could be written to allow us to just have discussions for the mean time. ;Blocking policy :Something that should be on all wikis, and it disturbs me that we don't have one of these. This would list lengths of blocks for certain offenses, and would be a transparent enforcement policy for users to read; it would mainly serve as a rule book for admins. ;Deletion policy :This page would be another rule book for admins, but would also explain to users what will and what will not be accepted on the site; therefore deleted. To be fair it would give time frames for deletions to take place within, rather than simply vanishing without notice. ;Manual of Style :Ubiquitous. Almost every established wiki has a manual of style; a page that describes (yes, in detail) the way to create articles: what type of language to use, when to use abbreviations, which section headings go where etc. (This would include Locomotive Wiki:Page Formatting as a section so that can be deleted.) ;Reference policy :This would explain when you do and do not need to use a reference. Creating an entire article without a source would mean the article gets a maintenance template added to it. However, for now, we could forgo the fuss over what color a locomotive was or is. So, in other words, nothing like what we've got currently! ;Naming convention (guideline) :This guideline would list best practices for naming any page that may be created by a user, however it would not cover anything in the user namespaces, e.g. User:, User talk: (aka Message Wall:), User blog, etc. The type of information in this guideline would be, or be similar to: how to use proper nouns in article titles, capitalization, how to name images etc. It would not have to be followed, but after much fine-tuning by community census this page may be quite specific. ;Notability (guideline) :Another guideline used on Wikipedia, and other big wikis, to stop needless articles from being added. For instance, if there are a 1000 locomotives in a class, we don't want an article on each of them. Same probably goes for adding articles for types of bolts... Copyright When your wiki is about a video game, movie or book franchise then fair use copyright law is very helpful. However, LW is not so lucky. The only thing covered by fair use on this wiki are the company logos. Everything else should be either licensed under Creative Commons (or similar), be in the public domain, or have written permission from the photographer. There is a serious problem with this on Locomotive Wiki, and I believe that this is a very important thing to get right sooner rather than later; particularly since later means more images. Information Sadly, I've had to put this down the to-do list a little way, however factual accuracy is very important to a wiki — so important that if not kept in check, nobody will visit a wiki. It is counter-intuitive to think this doesn't matter. It does matter, and Locomotive Wiki desperately needs help in this department. Bus 'em in And last but not least, and certainly not last in chronology, is the aim to get more users on Locomotive Wiki. As soon as possible a promotion campaign shall be initiated to this effect; part of this campaign might include the fact that LW does need help, and isn't complete. Something that can attract more users than saying, "look how great we are!" Something else that should be noted here, is that LW has faltered in the welcoming department of late. New users ain't dumb, so if they don't feel welcome they won't stay! Far future I believe locomotive wiki could become a staple for its brand of non-fiction information, like how Memory alpha, Wookieepedia have for their niches. It has been highlighted that we don't have to be "the best", but as far as I know that's not what wikis are about. Wikis are about a gathering of fanatics on a subject growing a web-site faster than it otherwise could be. So there is undoubtedly better locomotive sites out there, than Locomotive Wiki could ever hope to be. However, those sites are probably on a narrow topic. Locomotive Wiki can be far ranging, but it shouldn't be overreaching. As it's been pointed out to me, a bedrock of well known locomotives should be established to support those that we don't know so much about. Like a tree, LW should branch out from the core knowledge to include information at the extremities of the genre, but also like a tree these extremities shouldn't be too heavy. The core brings them to the site, the lesser known information keeps 'em here. That goes for viewers as well as editors. The former are the most important clients, and are sometimes forgotten to a wiki's demise. I see something in Locomotive Wiki for everybody. I see a plant that looks a bit mangy currently, but with a bit of TLC can flourish into a redwood — or at least we can have that ambition. ;) Please comment to add your ideas. If this plan is generally liked, I'll create a blog on each of the points here over the coming few weeks, so as to allow the community to decide in which direction Locomotive Wiki heads towards sunnier shores. Starfleet Academy (Messages) Category:Blog posts